Ode: Intimations of Continuity
by Evelyn Brightpaw
Summary: A verse expression of the Doctor's views on immortality. Inspiration and the first and last stanzas taken from William Wordsworth's poem of a similar title.


Ode: Intimations of Continuity

"_There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,_

_The Earth and every common sight,_

_To me did seem_

_Appareled in celestial light,_

_The glory and the freshness of a dream._

_It is not now as it hath been of yore; --_

_Turn wheresoe'er I may,_

_By night or day,_

_The things which I have seen I now can see no more."_

Sometimes I wonder, upon reading, if Wordsworth felt

Truly felt

The worth of his words. Life and Immortality

Are weighty matters to compare

When a man has only experienced

One.

I don't doubt he lived; his writing speaks

For well used years and well worn paths

Warmed by emotion, and

Woven into that knotted fabric

Of Connection, human connection that creates the vibration

Of the strings of collective humanity.

Human – no other creature so limited, and yet

So infinite,

So meddlesome in their efforts, and yet

So brilliant,

So weak under battery by nature, and yet

So unimaginably, irrepressibly strong—

And perhaps this is their mortality.

Because the Immortal is

Alone.

The Immortal is in isolation

Inside his own thoughts;

Thoughts which span an eternity, and thus

Cannot be communicated.

What is a thousand years to us?

A day.

What a day?

A thousand years of vain attempts

To soak in memories,

Before we lose what we hold most dear

To the storms we know are coming.

The Immortal is Prometheus

Chained to his mountain of years

Bound by inevitability

Weighted by his knowledge of what he will

Lose.

Day after day, or year after year,

Call it whichever,

Mortality takes his portion,

Plucking pieces from the Immortal,

From his innermost core,

Leaving him hollow, incapable of life.

And in place of each piece he gains another,

And that too is taken, in its time:

Mortality's portion.

Love and Loss are a cycle.

They affect both Life and Immortality,

As unchangeably as breathing,

In, out,

The constant.

But Life is Life because of that speck of uncertainty—

Will it be those I love, or myself first?—

And Immortality is not Life because of it.

Because the Immortal knows.

He knows, and waits for each one's passing,

Mourning the lost openly,

Mourning them all in secret.

Because he sees his own future,

That there will be a time, somewhere, distant,

In which

Every

Single

One

Is gone.

But that is continuity, isn't it?

Some things must go on forever, unchanged—

But no,

Not unchanged.

Unaged, unweakened, untouched by Time and mortality's corruption.

But not unchanged, not untouched

By That Mortal, and that thing they call

Life.

Because there will always be That One

Who is never completely gone.

And that One gives the Immortal…

Life.

That One

Is why the Immortal allows himself

A pleasure here and there;

Is why he allows himself to love

What he knows he will lose.

Because the Love and the Life are worth

Everything.

Because Love emanates from Life.

Because Life emanates from Love.

I am the Immortal.

And yet for a time, I was also

Alive,

Breathing,

Seeing,

Loving— connected and full,

After nine lifetimes of death;

For a time I forgot to see the universe

For what it was,

Learned to see it with wonder again,

And hope,

That blasted, blessed, optimistic hope

Only gotten from that infinitely limited,

Brilliantly meddlesome,

Strong weak fantastic human.

For a time, breathing felt like rainbows,

The scent of every color singing,

Wrapping around us,

Pulling us closer,

Pulling us along through endless gardens

Cobblestoned

A fountain

Dappled shade like a Monet landscape,

But swaying gently to our hearts' rhythms,

Everything

So organic it glows.

For a time the Rose was in bloom.

O! God, what a flower.

She is the queen of the garden, the Rose,

Red velvet and green satin

Diamonds in the dewy morning

Opening and spreading arms

To her subjects,

Graceful, tenacious, enveloping,

Lovely.

And the Immortal fool

Planted his garden among thorns.

And the thorns were coming in,

And the Immortal fool shut the gate.

And the Immortal fool locked himself

Out.

Forever.

And that is Immortality.

"_The Rainbow comes and goes,_

_And lovely is the Rose,_

_The Moon doth with delight_

_Look round her when the heavens are bare,_

_Waters on a starry night_

_Are beautiful and fair;_

_The sunshine is a glorious birth;_

_But yet I know, where'er I go,_

_That there hath past away a glory from the earth."_


End file.
